fairviewroad

Interestingly, it looks as though Boeing at one point expressed interest in a "combi" version of the Dreamlifter. But that was 3 years ago and AFAICT nothing ever came of it.

Herb687

And yet it still happens. Fully qualified and "professional" pilots still land at the wrong airport by mistake from time to time. UAL has done it with passengers onboard (landed a 757 on TJIG's very short runway instead of TJSJ). DAL too in Kentucky some time back. NWA in Europe... That's just off the top of my head.

Scarier yet, fully qualified "professional" pilots crash fully functional airplanes short of long runways in perfect crystal clear weather (Asiana at SFO) or crash into hills while prematurely descending below MDA (UPS at BHM).


A nice compendium of acronyms but pretty irrelevant here. VORs are hardly modern anymore. CPDLC is in still in its infancy and not used at all in the continental US. The finest avionics in the world aren't of much use to pilots that don't use them appropriately. I don't know why the fact that flights are carefully planned and vetted by dispatchers matters much when these flights are actually flown by pilots... Pilots, some of whom still manage to make some pretty stupid mistakes and display piss-poor airmanship on occasions...

Getting lost wasn't supposed to happen in the 1950s either.

Herb687

This is awesome. Took almost 6 minutes after landing on the wrong runway to figure out on WHICH wrong runway they were sitting (KAAO vs. KBEC)

http://vfrmap.com/?type=vfrc&lat=37....97.215&zoom=10

Other nugget of greatness: as pointed out elsewhere on this thread WARUN should be crossed at or above 3000' on the approach they were (sort of) flying. The whole runway at AAO is north of WARUN and field elevation at AAO is 1421'

At least 1579' low. Idiots are lucky they landed at AAO instead of colliding with the the 1814' tower abeam WARUN or some other object below MDA.

Wonder if they were low at the initial fix (to be crossed at or above 4000'). If not, and they were over WITBA at 4000' that would have been one interesting descent. Stablized schmabelized!

WindowSeat123

But it's not supposed to happen. I didn't say it could never happen. The fact there are isolated cases like this doesn't justify it. And those stuff I mentioned are pretty relevant. VORs are not modern but reliable if used properly. All those stuff are meant to prevent pilots from making such stupid and unacceptable navigational errors. We are not talking about a "amateur" pilot with a private pilot license here. These Atlas pilots are not recreational pilots but fully qualified ATPs who have gone through more rigorous and higher standard of training. It's inexcusable that professional pilots can make such errors. Such dreadful airmanship can't be cured with simple "retraining". More likely getting the pink slip is in order for them...

CzeSEN

I can tell you it really happens. I've been on a flight destined to BTS. Touched down in... VIE. 26 nautical miles off.

WindowSeat123

Like I said, how often are those situations with that Northwest flight? And would you have confidence in that Northwest crew? I would not. Being "new" to internatinal ops is not an excuse. They should know what to do from the get-go, not to learn from their mistakes with paying passengers as their guinea pigs.

Long day of Xmas charter? So would that make it alright for the pilot to land at the wrong airport? How would you feel after a long 15 hour flight from Toronto to Hong Kong only to discovered the pilot landed at Shanghai instead? If you hear the ATC link provided by some of the posters here, I don't think you will find the Atlas air crew here all that competent. Just because that AF1 pilot wasn't fired does not mean this Atlas crew can keep their jobs, not after their display of "professional navigation" for all to hear...

There is the issue of fatigue and over-scheduling of pilots like some other posters have mentioned, the blame for that I agree is with the airlines. But we don't know that yet in this case.

LilAbner

Ferguson v. NTSB , 678 F. 2d 821 (9th Cir. 1982) is a landmark aviation ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit handed down on June 2, 1982.

On July 31, 1979 Lowell G. Ferguson was the captain of Western Airlines Flight 44 from LAX (Los Angeles), California to seven locations, including Las Vegas, Nevada, Denver, Colorado, and Sheridan, Wyoming. Ferguson, with over 12,000 hours of flying experience, had never been found in violation of any Federal Aviation Regulations.

It was the first officer, James Bastiani, who flew the aircraft, while Ferguson handled radio communications. However, due to Aviation Regulation, Ferguson was considered the PIC (Pilot in Command) as Captain of the aircraft.

At approximately 10:00 pm, the plane mistakenly landed at Buffalo, Wyoming thinking the airport to be their destination airport of Sheridan. While there was no emergency and no injuries, some damage was done to the airport tarmac that was not constructed to hold the weight for a commercial airliner. (The aircraft was a Boeing 737.)

On November 28, 1979 the FAA suspended Ferguson's ATP (Airline Transport Pilot) certificate for 60 days, and charged Ferguson with violation of four sections of the Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR): (1) § 91.75(a) (14 C.F.R. § 91.75, deviating from an air traffic control clearance; (2) § 121.590(a) (14 C.F.R. § 121.590), landing at an airport not certificated under part 139 of the Federal Aviation Regulations; (3) § 121.555(b) (14 C.F.R. § 121.555), landing at an airport not listed in the Western Airlines Operations Specifications; and (4) § 91.9 (14 C.F.R. § 91.9), operating an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another.

Ferguson appealed the suspension and claimed he was entitled to a waiver of punishment under the "inadvertent and not deliberate" provision of an Aviation Safety Program referred to ASAP (Aviation Safety Action Program).

While the NTSB agreed the Ferguson's actions were not deliberate, his appeal was rejected when the court decided his actions were reckless and in violation of a key FAR § 91.5 that require a pilot to familiarize him/her self with all available flight information, and a company policy (Western Airlines Flight Operation Manual, P 5.3.3.C) that required him to use a radio navigational instrument to identify the airport before landing. Ferguson claimed he "saw the runway and assumed it was the right airport".

The ruling coined the phrase "inadvertent and not deliberate actions cannot encompass reckless conduct". In essence, Ferguson was suspended even though he made an "honest mistake", because as a professional pilot he was expected to do whatever he could to avoid that mistake. That, by his own admission, he failed to do.

bmatt

Some important points:

Boeing is probably pretty unhappy, besides the fact that their cargo wasn't delivered, since this jet and flight look like a Boeing flight and thus mistake. I wonder what percentage of the public is distinguishing Boeing from Atlas.

The pilots, when trying to figure out where they were, asked how many fields were SOUTH of McConnell. The controller replies that they are NORTH of McConnell. On this approach, there are two airfields one would fly over before getting to McConnell, Jabara and Beech.

An interesting comment from the pilots to the tower when the tower queried if there wheels were down. The pilots say something to the effect of standby, we're not on your approach or we're not on the right approach. I can't possibly figure out how one could become established on the wrong GPS approach. It almost seems like they asked for an instrument approach, then attempted a visual straight in when they saw the/a "field" (completely conjecture admittedly).

Jabara has an approach lighting system and is open at night. Given that spatial disorientation can cause one to misjudge a runways perceived length at night and this runway was probably lit up like a Xmas tree and it is on the approach course for 19L at McConnell, it is plausible (not forgivable) to see how one could bite off on it.

cblaisd

Thoughtful story on how/why this happens here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...ell-it-happens

LarryJ

The B747 has a flight management system (FMS) consisting of three laser-ring gyro inertial reference systems (IRU) feeding three flight management computers (FMC). The FMC position is updated through inputs from DME/DME and GPS. The pilots don't see the sources for the position information, the FMS just displays their position on their navigation displays.

Runway 19R was closed at Mc Connell for construction and the ILS to 19R was out of service. Runway 19L does not have an ILS so the crew was flying the RNAV 19L approach. The RNAV 19L approach flies almost directly over Jaraba runway 18. The Jabara runway is shorter and narrower but by being narrower (100' vs. 150') it creates the illusion of being longer. The crew would been expecting to see a single lighted runway due to 19R being closed. Visually, it would have been very difficult to tell that they had identified the wrong runway. That information would have been on their navigation display which they apparently abandoned after having aquired Jabara runway 18 visually. At that time they would have appeared quite high on the approach (due to the runway being 8nm closer than it should have been) and their attempts to adjust their vertical path and get the airplane configured for landing likely kept their attention away from the navigation displays.

Jabara (KAAO) was likely not in the FMS database because the runways are not rated for an aircraft the size of a 747. That is why the crew had difficulty figuring out at what airport they landed. They knew their Lat/Lon position but the FMS database did not know that there was an airport there. Their Jeppesen chart service would also have have included charts KAAO.


Tens of millions in damage? I'm not aware of any damage being caused by this incident. There are no NOTAMs for KAAO indicating any damage to the airport and the airplane would not have flown out so quickly if it had been damaged.

As far as what will happen to the crew, that will depend on the details of the incident. If they followed proper procedures throughout and simply misindentified the runway visually there is a good chance that they'll keep their jobs after some additional training. If they had deviated from company procedures then it is less likely.

The NWA incident is an unusual case. During their Atlantic crossing, the destination airport was accidentally changed in the ATC system so ATC was directing them to the airport at which they eventually landed. The crew had no idea that ATC was sending them to the wrong airport and, by the time they realized it, the Captain decided that the safest course of action was to complete the landing and sort it all out on the ground. Specifically, the Captain did not know how much additional fuel it would require to re-route back to their intended destination and didn't have the time to figure it out and compare with how much fuel was remaining.

trekker954

IMHO, looking at this aircraft and the odd size, and the seemingly landing at the wrong airport. Really. This has CIA written all over it.